I thought it might be fitting to end the Happy Birthday celebrations this week with a link (right here? from the blog?) to a clandestine view of the new WebJunction home page. Cleverly titled “sneaky peeky” this is the view that WJ staff have themselves been playing with in our “sandbox” for the last couple of weeks. It’s not nearly ready for beta release yet, but as you can see, My WebJunction is right there at the top of the page, along with our fancy new brand, just waiting for me/you/us to populate it with whatever i/you/we care about. It’s gonna be rockin’ and we can’t wait to start evolving this with more than just a few of us with our eyes on it.

Next week we get together with all of our current community partners for some good old fashioned f2f training, and this will be our first chance to show off and gather input on the new system with people outside of the WJ staff. Next? Our WJ Advocates will get a sneak peek and they’ll tell us what they think. Then? Well, by that time I think we’ll all be ready for a broader audience. And that’s where we all get to tell each other what we think. And it will grow from there.

Stay tuned…

I admit it. I like shoes. They’re fun. It’s one of my little things that keeps me going - when otherwise things might feel a little blah, a cute pair of shoes (on me or someone else) literally makes my day. Voila!

Personal faves from around the office? Kathleen (yellow sling-backs or teal clogs, I can’t decide). Jennifer (the ones that go perfectly with the plaids!) Dave (the old ones). Rachel (black sandals or red patten flats, I can’t decide). Michael (I can’t decide). Laura (plum ankle straps, hands down).

For WebJunction’s birthday, I decided to highlight my five favorite WebJunction moments *that have to do with shoes*. Whatever does this have to do with supporting libraries, you ask? Read on…

1. The photo you see here is me, Rachel, and Laura from the audience at CIL 2007. We were listening to the librarian from the National Geographic Society library talk about some cool 2.0 stuff they were doing with their intranet. Thanks to Rachel, we visited their library later that day.

2. This photo gives you a glimpse of one of our card-carrying shoe-lovers here around the office, and one of the 365 Days at WJ set that we started last year (before we started really planning for the new WJ in earnest, which is why we haven’t kept it up…shame on us!)

3. On the way to Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio 2006 I found myself without anything to wear but tennis shoes because my luggage had been lost on the way by United. Luckily, the conference center was practically attached to a mall and I was able to get some cute metallic silver flats to wear to my fancy dinner with Patrick Hogan. These shoes remind me of the shoes Sharon Streams is wearing this very minute! (This is also the blog post where I suggest that OCLC pick up Library Thing. Hmmm.)

4. When visiting the bay area just before the Online Community Uncoference in 2007, I sent a tweet about a cute pair of shoes I’d just bought. Colleague Dave Ungar (located in Dublin) picked it up and asked for a picture, which I posted on flickr. Several days later, our online exchange culminated in a spoof on some secret brand stuff another colleague had going on at work. You cannot hide on the tubes!

5. Finally, Michael Porter blogs his first (or was it second?) post at BlogJunction after accepting a transfer here from OCLC Western. In the post, libraryman admits to having purchased shoes from his WebJunction desk’s internet connection. It was after-hours, so we gave him a pass, but it brings me to my point about what any of this has to do with libraries…

We all work in or around libraries. We often struggle through the same challenges and share similar joys or successes. But we often don’t know each other personally, mainly because we work in diverse locations, and not just geographically. We can get together at library conferences, meetings, trainings, workshops, or other convenes, but even that’s limited by our niche in the library space, or our availability to physically get together; it’s never all of us.

Connecting online is relatively new to our profession, considering our extremely long history of shared professional practice. But by now most of us have felt the power of making those connections. Together we support and rely on one another, on everything from printers to politics. Once you’re online (not under-estimating how difficult that can still be) it’s possible to cross the boundaries that typically keep us from connecting with one another.

One key to making meaningful connections possible online has been revealing who we are as the people behind the text and even the avatars. When we open up and talk about otherwise superfluous things like shoes, we show that we are real people, and we build trust and connections that support the rest of our work, and perhaps more importantly, connections that will likely last far beyond our day jobs, whatever they be.

Happy Birthday WebJunction. Here’s to many more…

It is with great sadness, but lots of well-wishes for a bright future ahead of her, that we bid farewell to Program Director Liz Kellison. Liz was our first Content Manager and the third WebJunction employee EVER. She’s been with the project since before it began – quite literally! – as she was one of the authors of our original grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with our Executive Director Marilyn Mason. Largely responsible for the initial vision of our service, Liz is famous around the office for promoting “read, learn and share” – i.e., bringing together courses, discussions, and articles all together on a single WebJunction page. Liz has been fun to work with, inspiring as a leader for us and for libraries, and a tireless advocate for our programs and the people we work with. We will miss her dearly, but hope you’ll join us in wishing her well in all her future endeavors. (sniff. sniff.)

I left out the Putnam stuff I’ve been talking about in some of my recent presentations and instead focused on our community building roots and how in-person community building and online community building share the same principles and practice; then I connected what our patrons are doing with web2.0 tools to what library staff are doing with the same, and with projects like WJ.

I was a little nervous about the mix, with only one hour for a joint presentation with my co-presenter, Mala, the team lead for WebJunction Arizona, but at the end of it all, one of our audience members come up and says something like: thank you for your overview of social networking and what it means for WebJunction; now I understand why this stuff is important. I work in a rural library and I’m trying to help my community understand how to use this stuff and understand what it’s all about; this was really helpful.

Does it really get more libraryland luscious than that? Maybe. I’ll be here for it if it does. I only posted a few pictures from this very short visit, but you’ll find them here. Many, many thanks to the organizers of AzLA for having me. I had a great time and it was wonderful meeting and talking with so many of you and your library staff in Arizona.

(reposted on Libraries Build Communities)

This from Marylaine Block (to George by email posted here):
We are assured that the electronic nomination form is working, but if you prefer, you can supply all the information requested on the form and either fax it to 646-746-6734, or send it in an e-mail to Francine Fialkoff. The deadline has been extended to November 28.

So sorry to LJ - I hope you have a good turn out of do-overs!

Otherwise, IL2007 has also been fabulous - I’ve had a great time connecting with people that I haven’t seen for a while, as well as spending time with people that I know online better than I do in person. I always take a chunk of breakfast/lunch/dinner slots while I’m here at this conference to talk in person specifically with people that I’ve known or met online over the year before - it’s fun! This year I’ve met with Amanada, Jennifer, Josh, David, Robin, and a few others that I’ve maybe seen around before but really became ‘friends’ with in the last several months - either through facebook, twitter, or the WJ. Not to mention the folks that I know well, but don’t see very often - great connecting with these folks as well. Heck, even the people I see every day, I end up having inspirational conversations with. It’s such a wonderful source of new energy and innovation to get away from daily activities - get out there and talk to people (even the same people!) in a new context. THANK YOU to OCLC and WebJunction for making this an important part of our roles in the cooperative; it really makes a huge difference! “I love my online community” (and it gets bigger all the time) is the only thing I have to say about that!

One project I’m working on now (also with libraryman, and with cindi trainor (current WJ member spotlight) and michael sauers (traveling librarian)) that I’m super excited about is a series of interviews with “veteran” library professionals - the innovators of earlier times - that we can publish as primary resources (oral histories) and excerpt as a popular series, beginning sometime next year. It’s the most exciting project that I’m currently involved in, really, and it’s great to be here with colleagues - gathering new ideas (and names) for those interviews. Stay tuned for more info … I think there will be a lot of ways the WJ community can get involved in this project once it takes off.

I’ve also been encouraging anyone who’s interested in working in the social networking, community building, or learning areas to check out our open positions right now (on OCLC’s career site). See something you like? Please apply. Three positions are currently open in the Community area; we’d love to hear from you!

Back to conferencing …

I started a week’s vacation on Monday. I’m taking some time for a ‘writing retreat’ so that I can make my next deadline (Nov 1 - ahhh!) for the infamous book I’m writing about libraries and community building.

Serendipitous it was then that the new OCLC report on sharing, privacy, trust, and social networking was published online here (in pdf) on Monday. It’s perfect timing because it has such relevance to that ‘other’ work.

But because it also has such absolute relevance to my work at OCLC and with WebJunction, I couldn’t help but pop in here and say ‘hey! you should read this!’ and invite everyone over to my other blog for early thoughts and highlights. As I say over there, there’s more to come, I’m sure, as we dig into all those juicy details.

Back to vacation — very much looking forward to seeing some of you at Internet Librarian next week, BTW. If you’re gonna be there and want to connect, my profile and schedule is up on the IL wiki (as are those of some other WJ friends you may want to connect with).

The WJ-IL home page looks great (check out the video and the toolbar -first WJers to do these!). We’re excited about all the ways the IL State Library has customized their WJ service for library staff there, and we really look forward to working with them to build out our online communities for library staff development. We expect our work with IL to not only push us forward with new tools and formats, but also provide a model for delivering online community services through a single spot for the whole state.

Congrats to the state library and especially to Dawne and Lisa - you’ve worked hard and it shows!! Welcome to WebJunction - we’re glad you’re here!